Muscle Memory
by sorcerousfang
Summary: Ban is forced to put Himiko's life in the hands of the last person he ever expected to suddenly offer to save her. It's an admittedly fascinating sight, watching Jackal operate on auto-pilot.


The pharmacy was in chaos around him, but Ban barely noticed as he shoved his hands against the towel beneath them. Blood had already soaked through it. He ground his teeth in anger.

It was incredibly easy to direct his wrath at the black shadow that consumed the corner of the room, wide-brimmed hat covering half of his frustratingly impassive face, but he couldn't beat the living shit out of him until his hands were free. He was going to, though. That was a promise, because this was all _his_ fault.

It was all _his_ fault, because he was bored.

It was all _his_ fault, because _he left her._

His coat had pockets. That was the only reason he was carrying the package they were meant to deliver to Gen, why they had apparently agreed that if anything should happen that separated them, he should go ahead with it. When he showed up first, no one thought twice about it after he explained their mission and agreements prior, because he was Akabane; his relationship with death was remarkably one-sided. Himiko could take care of herself, he said, because she was a professional.

Ban interpreted that statement as meaning he didn't particularly care, because his interests lie elsewhere, and he made the transporter very aware that he knew that. Akabane didn't deny the statement, simply smiling in perverted glee.

His entrance had been an unwelcome addition to their friendly visit to the pharmacist, and apparently Gen hadn't been expecting the man, though he had been expecting the package. The clipped exchange between the two told the visitors that the older man was quite aware of who he was dealing with, and the transporter likewise. Ginji remained hidden behind Ban, much to Akabane's continued amusement.

But then Ren slammed through the door with the teenager hanging limply from her shoulder, blood pouring from her abdomen, and everything went to hell.

Jackal didn't move, even while everything around him did. Even while orders were being shouted and supplies gathered, even while Ren explained how she had found her, drawn by the overwhelming smell of perfume and blood, in an alley, barely conscious. The hakobiya might as well have been a furnishing in the room. He was silent, unmoving, _uncaring._

Ban seethed.

He knew his anger had everyone on edge around him, but he couldn't help it. Ginji would glance between him and the black shadow across the room periodically, his expression trying to be placating because _now was not the time_ , and Ren practically froze when she ended up mistakenly caught in his glare. Only Gen seemed immune enough to address him directly.

The older man was telling him to move to his right, setting up an IV quickly on the side of the bed he occupied, and he complied. His eyes drifted down to the girl on the table for a moment before setting on the man across the room once more, finding one exposed eye through the slit in his hat from his new position. He willed all of his rage through his gaze.

Jackal failed to notice.

Ban abruptly lost his composure, realizing suddenly that something was off about him. The transporter never failed to rise to a challenge. Hell, Jackal had been trying to goad him into a match before everything had fallen apart, but now he seemed… distant. He wasn't just quiet and unmoved, he was _too_ quiet, _too_ still.

Ren interrupted his observations as she came to the other side of the table, face pale and brow creased with worry.

"This… this might be too much for us," she admitted quietly. Ban's attention snapped to her.

"Don't you dare say that," he said through gritted teeth, anger renewed. "Himiko is _not_ going to die here."

"We can handle quite a bit, but I'm only capable of so much when it comes to a person who has never spent long in Mugenjou," Gen explained as he continued to prep, echoing her concerns. "This wound is deep. I'll do what I can, but I won't lead you on by saying everything is going to be alright. I'm not certain that my skills will be enough to save her."

Ban felt his heart drop. Ginji expressed his disbelief in tears. Ren avoided looking at him. Everything around them seemed to still as though everyone was holding their breath, and Ban couldn't _stand_ it.

 _No_. _This was not happening._

 _Himiko could not be dying. Not now. Not after all they had been through._

Movement and rustling fabric drew his attention just as a voice lent itself to break the silence.

"Mine will."

Unexpectedly, Akabane was now in full motion. Removing his signature hat and jacket, he did not meet their gazes. Instead he busied himself with discarding his gloves, pulling the tie from around his neck, and then rolling back his sleeves.

Ban was too shocked by the sudden implication to say anything. This man would do _what?_

"Akabane…san?" Ginji called out instead, the hesitation in his voice the question all of them had on their tongues.

A long pause preceded his attention finally settling on theirs. Ban was surprised by the fragility he sensed in the hakobiya's carefully tempered expression. Something had shifted within the man, something that made him vulnerable, but there was a determination in his eyes attempting to mask that.

"… _Doctor Jackal_ is not simply an aesthetic moniker."

-/-/-/-

Ban could admit that he was fascinated by the sight of the murderous transporter suddenly taking on the air of a dedicated surgeon. He gave orders with a rigid calmness that spoke of a long off familiarity with the task and seemed capable of improvising quickly with what materials the pharmacy had. A transfusion was set up, tools sterilized, oxygen started; everything done efficiently and with a level of care he hadn't ever thought the man capable of. Akabane asked for blood types when he found their supply of B was far too small, Gen walked Ren through withdrawing donations from Ban once they determined for sure that he wasn't just saying he shared her blood type down to the Rh antigen, and soon the two men were entirely focused on Himiko. The pharmacist stood in as doctor's assistant without offering and Jackal rolled with it like everything was planned.

Time ticked by with an agonizing slowness.

The air was tense and kept most of them from speaking during the entire ordeal, but the old pharmacist seemed to feel comfortable making small observations here and there. A compliment on Akabane's efficiency here, a comment on his technique there, and the hakobiya would sometimes answer and sometimes continue as though nothing was said. Ban watched the man's composure gently waver between passiveness and apprehension, never too far in one direction to falter, but far enough to read in his features. He wasn't sure if Gen had noticed the same, but he seemed to time his comments to match the fluctuations.

"You're quick," he noted as Akabane wove sutures. Sweat beaded his brow and his eyes were slightly wider. The mask covering most of his face made the rest of his expression a guess.

"I had to be."

It was an off-handed reply that made Ban curious because it was past tense, but like every somewhat intriguing response the man gave, he didn't dare press at the moment. The Hakobiya's expression settled once again into a careful neutral.

He had a lot of questions he _wanted_ to ask, like when Jackal had taken up saving lives, what brought on this sudden reversal of character, and was it something about Himiko, but just like Ren and Ginji, he was struck with an affliction on his tongue that kept it still. He wasn't sure if he was silent simply because he knew he shouldn't distract the man working to save the girl's life, or if he was still having trouble processing the fact that the man was working to save the girl's life. In either case, his inability to speak frustrated him, because he just wanted to scream. He wanted to rampage. He wanted everything to be _right_ again.

Ren pulled his gaze away momentarily as she quietly unhooked him and transferred the blood bag to her grandfather, who hung it quickly beside his previous bag, already half empty. Himiko's blood pressure had stabilized sometime after the second pint and the transfusion had slowed to keep up with Akabane's procedure, but that felt like hours ago. Gen had commented that the rate seemed too quick, Jackal insisted it would work, and Ban felt like everything was too slow.

 _Everything is too goddamn slow._

Ginji handed him a cup of juice to stave off the effects of his own loss of blood, forcing him to take a metaphorical step back. He took a deep breath. His partner gave him an understanding look before turning his attention back to the surgery.

Ban never trusted Akabane. He hated the man for a lot of things, but mostly for his false pleasantries and the sick pleasure he took in killing. They had been forced into situations where working together benefited both of them, and he appreciated the man's abundance of strength for those rare occurrences, but he still hated him.

At the moment, though, Ban _had_ to trust him, and was still coming to terms with the fact that, because of the man's current state, _he could_.

It was the most infuriating inversion of his pride he had ever experienced. Himiko was his responsibility after Yamato's death, and he always came through for her when it counted, but suddenly when she needed him most it was _Jackal_ who could help her, not him, and he was forced to accept that for her sake. He was forced to trust the person who could easily take the number one spot on his list of most hated people.

If the man wasn't off his normal game, Ban wouldn't have been able to do it, but Jackal hadn't cracked a smile or made a stupid comment ever since Ren had brought the girl in. All stiff and unusually subdued, he seemed to be going through the motions as though he were not entirely present, like someone unpleasantly daydreaming while riding a bike. His careful visage would crumble every once in a while, and something like pain or anxiety would show in his eyes like a distant memory before Gen would make a comment that pulled him back. Ban would have worried about those moments if it didn't seem like his hands still knew what they were doing.

Beside him, Ginji's eyes drifted between Himiko and Akabane as though he was still trying to make sense of the sight. Ban wasn't sure either of them ever would.

-/-/-/-

When he closed his final suture, breath seemed to return to the clinic.

Gen's assessment of the outcome of the surgery was positive, which prompted Ginji to attach himself to the elder before he knew what was happening, overjoyed and expressing it enough for both of them.

Ban went to stand by Himiko's side, but couldn't help watching Jackal out of the corner of his eye while the man cleaned himself up. It was a relatively slow process, drawn out by bouts of stiffness. He seemed to freeze up every few moments now that he wasn't focused on the procedure, and only appeared to recover as Ren held a towel out to him to dry his hands on. He nodded his thanks as though speaking was too much effort, but tacked on the verbal response a moment later as though the signal to speak had been delayed somewhere between his brain and his mouth.

His words drew the attention of Ginji, who was then the first to address any of what the man had done. He had a stupidly large grin on his face as he walked up to him and grasped his shoulders in about as close to an embrace as Ban figured the former Lightning Emperor was comfortable with (though if Jackal's hands hadn't still been occupied by the towel, he probably would have been shaking them). In typical Ginji fashion, he was overly excited.

"You really did it, Akabane-san!"

The transporter looked momentarily stunned by the praise.

"That was incredible! I didn't know you were such a good doctor, but then you went and put on all that doctor stuff, and then you got really serious, and you closed the wound, and you saved Himiko! I really thought your nickname just came from all those scalpels you use. Haha! Boy, was I wrong!"

It seemed to take him a long moment to process the retriever's excited imitation of the whole process before he nodded and took a small step back, gently shrugging out of Ginji's grasp and gaze falling back to his hands as he dried them.

"Yes, well… That was quite a long time ago."

Ginji must have been expecting a different sort of response, because his smile faltered as he watched him.

Ban watched the man's gaze grow distant, the towel passing over his hands mechanically, and found himself mildly concerned by the transporter's taciturnity. He didn't know what was going on in his mind, but Ban had a sneaking suspicion that there was a reason Jackal had stopped practicing medicine.

He looked back down at Himiko and gently brushed her hair back from her forehead. It hurt, nearly losing his practical sister and having to hand her life over to a man he would have never trusted it with, and not being able to do anything about it. He could still blame him for leaving her behind in the first place, but...

…He had _saved_ her, and at the cost of something haunting him while doing so. Ban owed him for that, at least.

"Jackal," he called out, his gaze never turning away from the teenager, though he could feel the man's eyes on him quickly enough. "...I don't know why you did it but thank you."

He never heard an acknowledgement, but he felt the gaze drift away from him a short moment later.

"If you will excuse me."

The next thing any of them knew, the transporter was out the door, towel dropped unceremoniously where his belongings remained draped across one of the chairs.

Everyone exchanged looks with each other.

"I don't get it, Ban-chan," Ginji eventually spoke. "Akabane-san _is_ an actual doctor, right? So why is he the way he is now? Why does he kill people so easily?"

"I don't know, Ginji," he answered with a shake of his head. He was still trying to reconcile the image of him being a doctor at all in his mind.

Gen's hand came to his chin and he hummed in thought, drawing his attention.

"You know something?" Ban pressed.

The old pharmacist pursed his lips. "MakubeX pulled information on him from the Archive. Akabane Kuroudo _was_ a doctor in another time – a battlefield surgeon during the war. I wasn't sure I believed it until I watched him work; he wasn't aiming for cleanliness or precision beyond what was needed to keep her alive and able to heal on her own, though he did a damn good job nonetheless."

"But why would someone that good just... you know," Ren pondered. "How could he just throw that away and kill people the way he does now? Don't doctors take an oath?"

"War changes people," her grandfather answered solemnly.

Ban thought about the looks that would cross Jackal's face during the procedure and figured unpleasant memories were the reason.

"Think he's alright? Maybe I should go look for him," Ginji offered, looking worriedly at the door.

"Leave him be for a little bit," Ban told him. The retriever gave him an uncertain look. "Probably needs a few minutes alone after all of that. I'll look for him when I go out for a smoke in a bit."

"You just donated two pints of blood," Ren reminded him with a cross look.

"And I'm still waiting for a better snack. Don't I get crackers or something? More juice?"

His humored tone seemed to lighten the atmosphere, because suddenly there were smiles on everyone's faces. He preferred this to the heavy atmosphere they'd been in for the last several hours. At least something had righted itself.

-/-/-/-

About twenty minutes later, Ban finally escaped Ren's insistence that he didn't stress his body with a cancer stick by 'promising' not to smoke while he was out (except that she didn't see his fingers crossed behind his back). He did manage to keep his word to find the missing hakobiya, who actually hadn't wandered far at all; he was merely at the top of the fire escape.

He found him looking at his hands as he leaned on the railing. He wasn't sure if he had noticed his presence at all, but eventually he spoke.

"…You must wonder what turned a physician to murder."

"I have a few guesses," Ban noted, but didn't elaborate. No need to delve into the man's past; he wasn't sure he was really that interested now. "You know, Himiko won't believe us when we tell her you're the one who patched her up."

A bitter laugh escaped him.

"That she will not."

Silence reigned for the better part of a few minutes until Akabane straightened his back, placing his bare hands in his pockets. Ban busied himself with retrieving his cigarettes from his shirt pocket until he spoke.

"This may seem a strange thing to hear from me, but I value life, Midou-kun."

"Yep," he replied quickly, withdrawing one from the pack. "Definitely the strangest thing I've ever heard you say."

Akabane chuckled quietly. "As I said. Life is such a vast, ever-changing wonder. It holds many interesting things; things I appreciate, things that entertain me… but it is all so fleeting, isn't it?"

Ban didn't respond, but he continued.

"I understand a lot about what it takes to be alive, but something about its opposite confounds me. It's rather baffling; I have seen so much death, much of it by my own hands now, and I understand exactly what the body does when it dies… the heart stops, breath ceases, brain activity halts, skin grows cold, and yet I am still missing something so crucial to death that I cannot comprehend it enough to _know_ it.

"It should certainly make some semblance of sense to a doctor, but I suppose I am the kind of person that needs to understand more about it to truly comprehend it. What is death, really? At a certain point in my career, I came to the realization that fighting it was pointless if I didn't understand what I was fighting so adamantly against. Death is inevitable, so..."

He had begun to ramble and had apparently caught himself doing so. Pausing to close his eyes, to take a breath, collect his thoughts, he seemed to take on an air of someone lost. Ban remained silent, unsure what to make of the vulnerable display.

"…The lives I saved returned to a battlefield, MIdou-kun. Kudou-san will as well, a different kind, but a dangerous life nonetheless. You can see where I found some conflict with my work."

"Yeah, I get it, I guess," he shrugged. "That supposed to be your justification, then? You take lives now to…what? Try to understand death? Save them from the cruelties of life? Because you didn't save all of them, so what was the point?"

Akabane suddenly took on a haunted expression and stopped looking at him, though his eyes never shifted away. Ban realized he hit the nail on the head, and maybe a little too bluntly.

He wondered for a moment what kind of person he had failed to save before shaking the thought.

"…If you want to understand death, the fastest route to it is dying yourself, isn't it?" he gently asked.

That seemed to bring the man back to the present. He blinked before looking away, expression subdued. After a long moment of silence, Ban figured he would not get an answer to that question. He instead turned his attention back to lighting his cigarette; he was long overdue for one.

"May I?"

The question came unexpectedly, and he looked up to see a scarred hand outstretched toward him. It trembled slightly.

"…You smoke?"

"It's a disgusting habit I rarely fall back on these days, but there are moments. I left my coat inside; I'll replace any when we return."

Eyebrows raised well above their natural placement, Ban eventually handed the box over. He could tell the man was semi-practiced when he tapped the box to allow the butt of one to surface, and after a quick exchange of box for lighter, only a mild grimace as tainted breath filled his lungs indicated his distaste.

The rush of grey tendrils passing from his mouth to the air seemed to suit him better than Ban would have thought.

"…The most direct path to understanding death," he recalled slowly. Ban spared him a glance. "Dying myself would be the simplest way, surely, but it is not a path I can take."

"Why?"

"Divine Providence."

Ban's breath halted in sudden understanding.

"…Because you can't imagine the entirety of your own death, you can't…" he commented with a shake of his head. " _Shit_."

"Rather the understatement."

"Have you… _tried_?"

"You can ask Ginji-kun about my most recent experience. His lamentation was quite touching."

Ban stared at him for a long moment before tossing his head back in laughter.

"I can only imagine how he reacted when you rose like a freaking zombie," he chuckled. "I'll bet he was falling all over himself."

"Hevn-san, too, along with the Thread Master and his friends," Akabane added. "But you're right; Ginji-kun's reaction was certainly..."

When he paused, Ban looked at him to find him back in thought. Eventually he shook his head.

"What?" the Jagan wielder asked.

"…Ginji-kun was glad that I was alive."

"That weirdo."

Akabane barked a laugh at that. "Indeed."

They fell to a companionable silence as they returned to their cigarettes. When Ban's finally ran low, he snuffed it out on the railing, and turned to watch the other taking his time. He no longer grimaced as he inhaled. His hand seemed steady once again.

"Why'd you save her?" he finally asked, because even after that mess of a confession, he still couldn't figure it out.

The transporter exhaled slowly, letting his hand fall to his side as he did. He leveled him with a somewhat distant look.

"…I'm not sure, really," he replied. "I suppose I regard Kudou-san as a partner too valuable to lose, but that shouldn't have awoken _that_ kind of reaction. There were other… parallels, I think, to a situation I found myself in long ago. I've been trying to come up with an appropriate explanation since you mentioned it."

Ban absorbed that for a moment before adding, "You did good back there. I never imagined myself saying it to you, but thank you."

He waved his hand dismissively. "I was partly to blame for so readily leaving without her once we were separated. She's powerful, but I sometimes underestimate the abilities of residents of Mugenjou because of my own. There's a fine balance between trusting your partner's skills and knowing your enemies."

"I was entirely ready to kill you for that, you know."

Akabane gave him a somewhat surprised look, so he continued, "You didn't notice. You'd been standing in the corner and I was glaring death at you so much everyone else seemed worried I would snap right there, but you didn't notice. Looked like you'd seen a ghost."

"Ah…" he replied quietly, glancing away. "Yes. Something like that."

Ban didn't press him. "Anyway, whatever reason you had for doing what you did, you did it. She means a lot to me. I realize what you did was difficult, so I figure things are even now and I can let you off the hook."

Akabane gave him a long look before nodding in agreement (or resignation, Ban wasn't sure). He lifted his cigarette back to his mouth, but paused, looking at his hand again.

"…I didn't think I even remembered how to be a doctor anymore," he admitted. "I suppose some things are better remembered by the hands."

* * *

 **It took a lot of debating before I decided to end this here, because I hit all of the important and necessary points. Sorry if you feel cheated out of Himiko's reaction – I'll leave that up to you to imagine.**

 **This doesn't quite fit anywhere in the series, but it's at least after the Divine Providence reveal from the Kiryuudo arc. *shrugs***

 **I thoroughly enjoy Akabane Kuroudo as a character. He's wonderfully vicious and driven mainly by his own desires, and I have absolutely no idea how to write that side of him at this point… so, I tug on his past and all of the sadness that entails in a lot of my musings.**

 **This story in particular was entirely born from two things: Could Akabane draw upon his old skills again under the right circumstances, and why the heck did he have a pack of cigarettes to throw at Ban during the Get Back the Arms arc?**

 **Typically and with very good reason, I think the community writes Akabane as having an abhorrence to smoking, but it just seemed so out of character for him to buy Ban a pack to replace the one ruined by his adventure in the water, so my brain wouldn't leave it alone. That thought led to coming up with a circumstance in which he does smoke, which led to thinking about how having an ability like Divine Providence would suck if you didn't particularly care to be immortal, which led to this whole thing.**

 **Aaaaaaaaaah.**

 **Anyhow, hope this was satisfying enough. I wish I had the ability to really research the procedure and all of that (I don't – damn phobia), but I think I'm pretty happy with this otherwise.**


End file.
